So after dipping our toes into this lifestyle, here’s what I’ve already learnt:
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1. Ideally, get a live-in gardener and carpenter. It would make life easier. Oh, and a dish washer and someone to sleep for you.
And while I’m at it, the ability to have encyclopedias downloaded into your brain is also useful!
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2. Let your toddler help plant. Definitely. But either give her REALLY big seeds or pour the amount you want into a saucer or your palm for her to sprinkle in.
Do NOT give her the packet without checking how many seeds are in it. We have over 150 purple sprouting broccoli seedlings to prove this point.
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3. Discard any sentimentality or wimpiness. I want to save every single seedling that germinates. This just doesn’t make sense if you have a lot of seedlings.
Sadly runt seedlings may not make the cut and feeling guilty about it is quite silly. (I could make a “didn’t make the cut” vegetable patch to ease my guilt…?!)
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4. Build your raised borders in the winter, not the spring when you need them! Even better, build them in the autumn so you can build up your soil and compost over winter… We didn’t do this.
(Joel reminded me morning sickness, sciatica and a toddler – on top of other things – didn’t help this!)
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5. Beauty must be practical in this lifestyle. Unless you own a big house, potting shed, and greenhouse, which we don’t, window sills and the conservatory become work areas, not pretty doily areas. The kitchen is lived in and used, not a very expensive ornament.
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6. Carpets don’t work. Actually, I’m not sure carpets work with toddlers anyway.
All floors must be brushable, mopable and preferably bounceable for those times your previously-mentioned toddler throws herself on the floor in rage.
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7. Put a circular or chop saw on your birthday wish list…
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8. Don’t be pregnant during a heatwave and have a teething toddler. Just don’t do it.
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9. If you don’t like being outside, this lifestyle may not be compatible.
If you like manicures and long nails, you may also want to give it a pass.
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10. Watching your daughter’s delight and awe at seeing things grow is one of the cutest things on the planet.
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11. Bonus: everything takes time or money. You just have to decide which currency to use.
For instance, we’re trying to save money so have scavenged wood and cut up pallets to clad our first raised border. The cheaper time option would have been buying planters or timber. We probably couldn’t afford the money needed on copious amounts of building materials though.
Now if anyone knows of a way to quickly chip concrete off old bricks, please do let me know!!!!
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12. Bonus bonus: don’t lose sight of the goal. What we’re aiming for is a less frantic, more purposeful way of life.
That does include hard work. But that work shouldn’t come at the cost of spending time with our daughter, each other and other people.
Fifteen minutes of playing jigsaws with a toddler and making animal noises and tickling is fifteen minutes well spent, even if the raised border gets painted later.
a short-haired hippy 